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Agency trumps intelligence.
Intelligence is just the ability to make models, it is a tool.
What matters is what you deploy this tool for.
That’s why agency tends to be more useful than intelligence.
Just making models for the sake of making models does not necessarily lead to success.
Agency is the control of the future.
Link to originalThe minimal agent is a controller of future states.
An agent can be something as simple as a thermostat which can control future trajectories, with the goal of keeping the room at a certain temperature. Its decisions affect future trajectories.
In order to be able to do that, it needs to model the world of how the world is going to change as a result of its actions (with different expectation horizons in a branching world, …), rather than just taking measurements. The efficiency of this process is its intelligence.
We end up with a system that seems to have preferences, knowledge, commitments, goal-directedness, …The more an agent is able to model its own actions as a causal factor in the world, the more self-aware (conscious) it becomes.
At this point, you start to edit your own source code, become self-authoring, change the way you interact, …
See also agent.
“Which action would maximize agency?” is often a good question to ask … not just personally, but for society / class consciousness / companies / …
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